I used to joke that my three years in Catholic school explains everything that's wrong about me. That's not true. Having a brand new and super-adorable stuffed animal taken away by a crazy relative who seems to find joy in your crying, screaming and begging, now, that explains what's wrong with me.
The truth is that, even though it was called a Catholic school, it isn't what we here in the United States think of as a Catholic school. First of all, it was a public school. It should really be described as a school operated by Catholics. Sure, Bible studies was a seventh of our day, there were daily prayers, the school was attached to a church and nuns lived in the mysterious, forbidden wing of the school. But the nuns never taught us anything and the monks just kept disappointing us because we kept thinking they were the kung fu kind of monk. Really, if the school's goal was to create good Catholics it failed its purpose hilariously.
In my three years there I've only set foot in the school church (it was, I believe, more like a cathedral) about four times. It was my favorite place in the school for no reason other than it being the only place in the school, other than the dean's office, to have air conditioning; even during 95-degree days being in the cold, dry dean's office seemed like a bad idea. My only memory of the church is that I won a poetry recitation contest (yes, we had poetry recitation contests) that was held there.
Bible study was actually my favorite class for the sole reason that it's an easy A. As long as I knew that God loves everyone and Jesus was awesome I would destroy the tests. I suppose, in retrospect, that this was actually some kind of objective lesson. We never actually read the Bible, possibly because we weren't at the right reading level yet. I actually own a Bible and I have never read it; maybe I opened it twice in my life.
The daily prayers were less inspirational than exercises in patience and willpower. Imagine standing outdoors wearing a thin button-down shirt and a thin sweater in near-freezing weather, having grown up in a tropical climate where “freezing” means “instant death for half of the population” and “snow” means “nuclear winter is coming”, for half an hour while a man asks you to repeat some sentences about God being awesome. Yes, sir, I know that God is awesome. No, sir, I don't think God being awesome is helping much in this weather. Repeat the same thing with wet, dreary 97-degree days the other half of the year. My memory, as you can probably imagine, contains no trace of the prayers. I suppose I have to thank the prayer-leading-man, though, since I now wear just a t-shirt and a skirt when it's only slightly below freezing.
In the end, I only learned three things from Catholic school: God is awesome (and so is, by extension, Jesus, and some other thing that we haven't learned about yet seems to be pretty awesome too), prayers are useless next to the willpower of man and nuns are secretive and weird. At no point did I learn about things like going to church, getting baptized, Lent, the difference between Catholics and other Christians, communion, confessions and all those other things that actual Catholics know.
So my idea of Catholicism was that people communicated with God, who's awesome, directly. No rituals like those silly incense-burning Buddhists or prayer-strip-waving Taoists. People should talk to God pretty often, say, when their teachers tell them to pray, but it's not really necessary. I mean, prayers don't really work, so what's the point?
As a part of the world-running Vatican-based not-secretive mega-organization, my school was an utter failure in producing me.
In the next decade I found out how Christianity really worked mostly by putting my foot in my mouth. Say, for example, by asking the very Protestant relative whether she was going to see the Pope when he was coming to visit New York. How was I suppose to know that they were different?! They worshiped the same god! To help save me she took me to church. It was so boring I started, finally, reading the Bible because I had nothing else to do. Halfway through Genesis they started drowning this poor woman up at the front of the church. Why was everyone clapping and cheering? Once I found out what that was about I started worrying. I was born in a Christian hospital (free Bible for every baby, which is why I have one); what if I was secretly baptized by the doctor before I was handed to my mother? What do I get for getting baptized anyway? Do I get combat bonuses against the undead and the wretched?
Then I started dating a Catholic girl. Suddenly I was the horribly insensitive boyfriend because I didn't understand why she's not drinking coffee for a month. (Is it a month? I still haven't figured this out.) Lent? Ash on your head? What are these crazy things? In an effort to not be a completely bad boyfriend I gave up coffee with her. It's been four years since I drank caffeinated coffee (save for two occasions). As for her? She went running to the closest Starbucks the second Easter was over. It was possibly the most Catholic thing I have ever done. It was also one of the healthiest things I have every done. Maybe there's also a lesson to be learned there.
I'll end my story with this: the evil bitch who took my stuffed animal away is now not crazy and not evil. She has found Jesus.
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